Death and All His Friends
by Esper Kay
Summary: It's funny with these humans, how life goes on. How they can take the worst string of mass murders in their history, even the deaths of their husbands and sons and best friends, and piece together a new life out of what remains. Multiple POVs, post-canon.


(A/N: I'm technically kind of out of the Death Note fandom now-whether it's a temporary or permanent exodus remains unknown at the moment-so this is kind of a nice wrap-up to my ten-month obsession, or at least it is for me.

Some details have been changed slightly, but I'll address that when you get to the end. Nothing major. Also, there is very briefly mentioned Matt/Mello, so just a heads up if that's not your thing. However, it is just a passing detail and shouldn't detract from the overall story.

So without further ado, please enjoy, and leave a review!

That rhyming…Yikes...)

* * *

They find Naomi Misora's body exactly one week after the Kira case is officially closed. Precisely one week, three hours, and four minutes.

_Take note of that_, the people say to one another-the people of the NPA, members of the police force in that particular region of Japan, the media and common folk, an old man contemplating as he looks down at a silver-haired boy bent over playing cards. The people with only a vague grasp of the situation to the people who only know half of the story-or less than half, for who really knows of the death gods and notebooks and end-winter days when boredom started all this?

_Be amazed._

The body of Naomi Misora-member of the Japanese FBI, promising new talent behind the solving of the LABB murder case, too trusting of silver-tongued boys with the right connections-, more skeleton than skin, hangs by a fraying rope tied to one of the rafters in a secluded shed on an abandoned property Misora had visited sometime during her handful of covert investigations.

Police take down the body-the once-attractive woman now reduced to stringy black hair and a dusty trench coat-to be taken away for final forensic testing and ultimately for cremation, make a memo to themselves to contact any living relatives, and marvel at how quickly L had managed to deduce where Misora's body was located-only days after taking the case (a surprise in itself; why would L of all people be interested in an obscure missing person's cold case from over five years back?).

Then again, L had suddenly, inexplicably, put on an impressive burst of productivity. Or so it seemed from the ignorant public's point of view. Water coolers in police departments and government offices all around the world crowded with men in uniform and official-looking suits speculating about the reason behind the legendary detective's abrupt reversal back to his old ways of solving a national crisis a day.

Could it, the final conclusion was offered tentatively, usually by the lowest-ranking, know-nothing rookie or nerdy office page, could it have something to do with the strange lack of activity from Kira? Had L finally won against his foe after so many years?

These same men shook their heads and crushed their plastic cups, doing the same to the proffered theory, an idea that they would now leave in the bright morning at their work desk but turn over anew as they dragged their bodies into bed that night.

One thing was for sure: L was different now, almost like a new person.

...But of course the very idea was impossible.

* * *

Near debates for a long time over funeral arrangements for Mello and Matt.

(It's not as simple as packing The Murderer away in a box and sending him back was-private jet, one way, one stop. He's no longer living, the reasoning, thus he is no longer my problem.

…_And good riddance, Kira_.)

He finally decides to bury Mihael (more of a memorial than actual grave, his ashes irretrievable) and Mail side by side in a garden at the edge of the grounds at Wammy's. It would have been a closed casket service anyway, Near reasons, so there was no real point to proceed otherwise. There was nothing of Mello to (putting it bluntly) show off, ironic given his taste in fashion and lifestyle, and Matt…hurt too much to look at. It wasn't just the rubbery skin-eyes-hair of a typical embalmed corpse, but the hardly-concealable bullet holes pock marking various regions of his body throw Near back to a looping, pixilated camera-recorded nightmare in which life flashed by in a glorious 90 miles per hour of squealing brakes, black cars, and the sound of too many bullets and the taste of untended cigarette ash, that he couldn't stop no matter how many times he pressed the square-shaped button on the screen.

And no one would know what to say at a formal ceremony, anyway. No one that knew him could say anything remotely kind about Mello-most of them were dead themselves (some at his own hand), and Matt had never been religious, much less sociable. Near would have sat in a hard wooden pew in a mostly-empty church, wearing a scratchy suit (unless he could compromise into something comfier) for an hour as a minister struggled for suitable things to say, statues of the merciful and holy and stain-glass patron saints with blood-free hands silently passing judgment above.

Instead, he flies up to Wammy's Home for Exceptional Orphans in Winchester England and watches as the identical wooden coffins are lowered into the ground. He supposes he should cry, since the two were the closest things to friends he had (he decides _close acquaintances_ is a more fitting term, given the frequency of attempts and strong desire Mello had to kill him), but his companion Halle Lidner is doing enough for him…and probably three other mourners besides. He wonders, not for the first time, why he brought her along, but then rationalizes it as normal behavior for females in times of loss such as this.

_(He mentally translates: She probably hated that she missed the chance to sleep with Mello.)_

He finds himself unable to empathize, more than his usual biting apathy. Maybe because he knows that this is what Mello wanted; a final victory that Near could never achieve, could never top, a private middle finger to his lifelong rival to show that he was _that _much more dedicated to L's memory. Or maybe he was acknowledging that, in the end, taking down Kira and bringing justice back to the world was bigger than a petty childhood rivalry that had festered and twisted over to years to become something deadly.

Maybe. Near sincerely hopes that Mihael found some kind of peace in his brilliant but insane mind in that abandoned church that brisk January night.

Or maybe he cannot mourn because he put Mello and Matt-the real Mello and Matt-to rest years before. He still sees them as the young teenagers at Wammy's, laughing at private jokes behind stacks of school text, or getting into mild mischief in the lunchroom. Mello had always been cold to him, even making snide remarks just out of earshot or giving him a shove or two when no authorities were present, but he could depend on Matt to give him a kind smile when they crossed paths.

But that rainy afternoon when Roger gave them the news of L's murder, the true Matt and Mello had died-Mello killing the person he could have been to sell his body and soul to chase after an ideal. Matt, left in the dust, had slowly turned into a ghost, a sad walking figure that blended into the wallpaper as the once-gossiping peers pitied and then gradually forgot about him. So good was he at fading away that most didn't even notice the day he truly disappeared, following a carefully-coded summons halfway around the world and straight to an early grave.

He waits as patiently as possible until Agent Lidner's tears have dried, then makes a note to himself as they walk back to the main building that as long as he's dealing with burials, he might as well get L's body shipped from who-knows-where back in Japan and into a plot nearby on the grounds. What was that ridiculous pseudonym he had gone by, again?

* * *

Barely two weeks pass with the dead buried in the ground before they visit.

Near can't decide if he wants this to be real, for him to truly be haunted-for the ghosts of those lost in the Kira case that he knows to come to him at night, silent and vigilant-or if he just wants to be a crazy figment of his genius mind suffering from an overbooked work schedule.

L is first, choosing only to sit in the corner-all-seeing justice with unblinking ink-black eyes, a dark spot on the left side of his shirt where his unbeating heart should be. Mello follows like a good successor, but at rest he is not. Up and down, the continual pacing goes, back and forth at the foot of Near's bed night after night. Either he doesn't see his formal rival or is too good to give him eye contact, his mouth contorted into a deep scowl, his form black and almost charred around the edges. Matt is next on the chain, as stoic as his partner is unsettling. He leans against the wall, a never-expiring cigarette that emits only the faintest sign of smoke perched on his lips, stained holes spattered across his chest and face.

And then the last one, the worst of all. Light Yagami is still a force in death as he was in life, reminding the boy how terrifyingly close he came to losing. He is the catalyst, causing the reactions in the other three. Sometimes there is yelling, mouths open, shouting words Near cannot hear, pointing and violent gesturing; sometimes there is an eerie stillness that cannot be qualified as peaceful where they simply stare at one another; then the few but most horrible nights where Light is pleading, as if he has finally realized, too late, that he has something to apologize for. The other three only watch him, impassive, and Near finds he feels a hollow ache inside and a sort of pity for Yagami Light he could never begin, much less want to try to, explain.

He learns to nap during the day, in the brief minutes between preventing mass genocide and instructing secret service agencies across the world, or to face the wall away from them and shut his eyes. At least now he looks more like his predecessor-his eyes have dark rings around them arguably as deep.

The nights pass and he gradually gets used to The Disturbances, as he labels them, working himself hard enough during the day to collapse into bed and sleep dreamlessly at night, urging the memories to fade.

And maybe, for a small time, he succeeds at pushing every minute of his life for the past five years to the back of his ever-processing brain.

It works until he gets the wedding invitation.

* * *

Some may question the wisdom of letting Sayu Yagami get married, taking into consideration her age and prior plans to get a college degree, the age of the groom, and most notably the bride's fairly recent mental illness.

Sachiko Yagami does not listen. Doing as well as can be expected after the tragic deaths of both her husband and promising elder son, she has now dedicated her life to the well-being and happiness of her only remaining family, the formerly less-favored daughter.

Meaning that if she has to renounce her fierce declaration of her daughter never marrying Touta Matsuda, then so be it.

A sudden, unexplained maturity has come over the young man in the recent months, hand-in-hand with the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and occasionally hollow smile. There was a vague rumor no one could ever trace that he had shot a criminal that he may or may not have been close to as the cause, but it was never addressed. News was he was still doing well in the NPA, maybe even close to getting a transfer to a head position in another department.

It had been a fairly brief courtship, beginning with Matsuda's almost-daily visiting the Yagami household shortly after the end of the Kira case. Back then he had taken to showing up to comfort and encourage the family, as well as mourn for the dead himself. At that point it was uncertain how long Sayu's almost catatonic state would last, or if she would even come out of it at all. Still, he always made an effort to speak to the young woman, even if she never responded.

The widow of Soichiro Yagami would swear up and down that his unrelenting attempts brought about her daughter's gradual thaw. She made remarkable improvement in only a few weeks as he continued to visit her, beginning from simply acknowledging him with her eyes to smiling, then building up to speaking. Finally she had left the confines of her wheelchair to take her first few wobbly steps, pushing her mother to let her do small chores around the house to feel like less of a burden, including opening the door to greet their male visitor. Missing the dead was pushed away in favor of celebrating her weekly achievements.

When she was finally told of the death of her brother and allowed to process it and the additional passing of her father, they had feared she would retreat into her own world again, possibly for good. But Sayu surprised them, projecting her sadness outwardly instead of repressing it as before, leaning on their empathy to get her through the initial mourning.

Sachiko will never know when the platonic care and tenderness of a friend turned into romance, but they are indeed in love; as much as her and her husband were on their wedding day so many years ago. Practically, it is a good match, for Matsuda can support her daughter's weak constitution, and her sensible, quiet personality balances him perfectly. She wishes them much joy, and a marriage that is not sacrificed for work. Secretly, irresponsibly, she wishes for grandchildren right away, but not the heartbreak of a child too smart and perfect for its own good…

* * *

The ceremony is western-styled, per the request of the bride and groom, with a very respectable amount of guests: friends of the bride, co-workers of the groom, even a minor celebrity in pigtails and black near the back.

The bride thinks she will tease her new husband about this surprise (but not unwelcome) guest afterwards-did he have a crush on the model once?-but when she meets his eyes and a nervous-elated-purely _Matsuda _grin, she can only smile back.

She takes his hand and, if only for the rest of the ceremony, they can forget the tragedies of the past the brought them together and look forward to the happiness ahead.

* * *

It is a beautiful wedding-Sayu looks healthy and happy and her Matsu so proud-and the irony of the joy of the union and the sadness underlying it makes tears spring to Misa's eyes. But for every tear of regret there are two for joy. Love, true love, is a wonderful, precious thing she knows she would kill for but knows with equal certainty that it will never be hers. Maybe she shouldn't be here, but she had to see. Someone needs to have a safe, happy ending.

She herself is doing…_well_, she would venture to say. Life has been strange, but is turning around. There are jobs to bury herself in-long hours of photo shoots, upcoming movie parts, promotional television appearances. There are friends to make and assistants to worry and empty-eyed pretty boys to take home and not return their calls the next morning.

Sometimes her manager or a fan's email will ask her, _Misa, what were you doing the last few years_?, but no matter how hard she thinks, she comes up empty. She knows it goes back to a boy, a boy with a strange name and equally unusual eyes and a one-sided desperate manipulation/adoration, but she doesn't think about that. His pictures are gone, and his clothes, and if she can have another drink before bed maybe his face won't appear in her dreams tonight.

But she is getting better, truly.

Even if, for some reason, some days she sees strange things, as if the people around her have flashes of blinking red numbers above their heads…

* * *

Time passes, but Roger finds himself too busy to truly notice. It was one thing keeping up an orphanage for geniuses, especially with his intense dislike of children-_thank you Quillish and your anthropology streak a mile long_-but now he has also assumed the full duties of Watari.

He often wonders how his old friend kept his sanity, much less his sense of good British hospitality. The demands of his job are impossible-a week in Paris, straight to New York city for two, then on to Cairo or Brussels before finally earning a two-day retreat at the Wammy's house with various pit-stops along the way, all spent indoors researching or paging contacts.

And placating Near, lest he forget. Part genius, mostly spoiled child. Nineteen and still in constant demand for toys. He buys robots and cars and blocks in bulk, thinking there must be a happy toy factory somewhere in Taiwan and simultaneously wondering whether or not this is preferable to serving up sugar-filled foods and staying up most nights.

Privately, all grumbling aside, he would watch over a thousand Nears if that mean he could have his old friend back. He respects, even admires, Quillish Wammy's devotion to L, but questions his willingness to put his life on the line for his charge.

Then again, he shouldn't be Watari, anyway. It should have been Mello, or Matt. Most likely both-Mello in the field as the contact, Matt handling all the technology. Even now he can see them-Matt, huddled in a corner, head bowed as his fingers tap laptop keys at furious speeds. Mello, alternating between bouncing off ideas and sniping at Near. The air alive with smoke, the smell of chocolate, and tense competition. The identical looks of triumph in their eyes with a sudden lead, secret smirks they'd flash to each other that would invariably lead to shame for Near and a headache for him.

Sometimes he begins to understand Quillish's real motivation behind his role, something he and Near are incapable of possessing. Even if L was never emotionally able to reciprocate, there was a mutual bond between them, if not of a father-son variety then of two lifelong business partners. Though he has known him most of his life, Near is essentially a stranger to Roger. He will never begin to be able to trace his thought processes, or change his moods. If the circumstance were different, they would be a world apart, quite literally. They have been brought together by necessity and mutual relationships, nothing more. An arranged marriage of sorts.

He secretly loathes his role, what it has done and what it will do; he hates the L legacy and the destructive path it blazed across the years. A, dead before twenty, found with a warm gun in his hand and a hole through his head; B, his sanity snapped under the pressure of trying to succeed and attempted suicide followed by a painful death in the name of righteousness; most recently Mello, turning to the underworld for revenge and ultimately his own demise. No child should be built up on such expectations. No single person should have all the justice in the world on their shoulders.

But he does it as long as he must, until a suitable heir can be found, because he doesn't want another Kira. If this is the sacrifice he must make for that, for keeping Quillish's good attentions alive (after all, Wammy himself didn't know what he was getting into when he found a too-skinny boy with a penchant for sugar and puzzle solving), then so be it.

* * *

One year passes, then two. Three bleeds into four. The nights are longer and the cases grow tiring and almost predictable, making Near almost wish for the spontaneity of Kira on his more cynical days. He gradually falls out of contact with most of the SPK as they try to move on with their promising lives, only coming into contact with the Task Force when he goes through Tokyo on a case. Rester has retired and Lidner and Gevanni have moved to separate agencies; there is a man named Yamamoto in place of Soichiro now, a rookie to fill Matsuda's position now that he is head of the elite Firearms Division.

The ghosts linger, stronger, and even Mello now acknowledges him. There are no silent arguments now, no emotion-they just watch him, identical knowing, sad looks in their eyes. He finds he is no longer afraid, somehow-he looks back or ignores them just as easily. He blames the daily fatigue that is getting harder to shake off, and the cough that he's been hiding from Roger since winter. Should he, he wonders some nights as he drifts off, feeling the glances of the waiting behind his closed eyelids, feel so _old?_

* * *

Early spring takes him back to Wammy's, where the children have just finished their semester exams. The afternoon sun fills the large common room as he and Roger enter, standing in the center as the orphans continue obliviously in their play. The older man begins to point out promising boys and girls at random-H over there has brought the medical field on its knees with his new thesis on the origin of acute nasopharyngitis; R only last week translated ancient Egyptian scrolls to provide new insight on the reign of Rameses II-but Near turns a deaf ear. His eyes fall to a blonde girl in the center of the room, alone, constructing a model car, a concentrated frown fixed to her face.

He knows-he knows before he points and Roger tells him she exceeds her peers, top of the school with no contest; before he crosses the room and steps on a crumpled candy wrapper beside of her to observe closer; before she suddenly freezes and looks up to glare at him, her ice-blue eyes almost achingly familiar. He knows even before he says his intentions and Roger says, "You want M?"

He has found his successor.

* * *

He has another reason for coming; Linda has finally finished his commission, and the unveiling of the painting is held privately in a back bedroom that hasn't been used since its two boys moved out almost ten years before.

Near's reasoning had been that Wammy's practice of keeping all its current and former residents' records classified or destroying them outright need not apply if the residents in question were deceased. He is thankful for Linda's photographic memory; the only record of either of the subjects had no doubt been destroyed after he had returned it.

She paints the two as the boys they were, not the men that sacrificed themselves for their underhanded cause. Matt's eyes are-as they always were-for Mello, slyly to the left of him, a secretive but still gentle smile poised forever as he leans against the back of the chair the blond is seated in, as if he is in on a great secret.

(Privately, Near wonders if Linda also knew about the more-than-friendship the two shared-the hand squeezes in the hallway when all other eyes were turned away, the lingering glances after a series of intense whispers, how Mello kissed Matt smack-dab on the lips that last night at the orphanage after he made it clear nothing or no one would keep him there).

Mello's eyes stare straight ahead, eyes daring the viewer to judge him. His skin is unmarred, no lines of world-weariness about his face. He reclines gracefully, almost regally, in his straight-backed chair.

There is so much hope there, so much promise. They could be any two young boys-innocent, normal children who want to grow up and be an astronaut or a professional soccer player or a normal 9 to 5 worker with a family. No scores to beat, no one to impress, no disappointments, no unhealthy obsessions…

Screw being the smartest in the world, they could be _alive_.

For the first time in his life Near's eyes sting inexplicably and he has to pause a moment to swallow. He blames his health.

Per his request, the watercolor is placed in one of the more trafficked hallways, beside portraits of other notable past residents-including the kindly-faced founder with a bowler hat and spectacles and a disheveled younger man with black, pitted eyes that no one can recognize. Occasionally a child will stop to stare, and the few that remember the pair-the ones that had come to the house young enough to stay for so many years but old enough to recall with clarity-relate bits and pieces of rusty memories and gradually exaggerated tales.

And so the legend of the two will grow, a tale of two unrecognized heroes that so bravely faced death. Children in generations to come will look upon them in wonder, these who went against a criminal that society will no longer recall, but someone horrible and twisted with no originally-good intentions nonetheless. They will whisper their names in hushed whispers in the halls and the classrooms and dream of obtaining a sense of justice like theirs.

And even after the generations pass and their names are erased from memory by Time and the history books are rewritten to gloss over Kira and the world forgets to rely on L, the orphans will gaze at these two, the beautiful blue-eyed boy and his enigmatic goggled companion. They will have new legends, recognized as heroes, achieving the recognition they deserved but eluded them so long ago in life. Yes, Matt and Mello will be remembered.

Near will not. He is counting on it.

* * *

On the last day, before he goes away to train the new potential L (and leave a grateful Roger behind, who is hiding behind the excuse of not wanting to interfere with this process and his own slow process of choosing his own successor, the new Watari), he puts on the suit that is every bit as itchy as he feared and goes down to put flowers on the graves.

He's never been one for sentimentality, and he doesn't believe in the strange custom of talking to tombstones, so he doesn't try. He stands up-or sags, really-and for once in his life, he doesn't think, doesn't revert to a habit. He lets a few minutes pass to just drift, to feel the calmness of the cemetery, the change around him.

It doesn't last long; a fresh coughing wave sees to that. He turns away and starts back slowly for the car. Out of the corner of his eye he might see three figures standing where he just was-one hunched a bit, another smoking, the other with a bar of some kind of sweet-but he doesn't turn back to make sure. He'd like to think they're looking on in approval.

Approval, not expectancy. A wind blows through the trees and he shivers involuntarily.

* * *

Out of sight, a lone Death God hovers over the scene, just watching, a toothy grin permanently plastered over his face.

It's funny with these humans, how life goes on. How they can take the worst string of mass murders in their history, even the deaths of their husbands and sons and best friends, and piece together a new life out of what remains. How they continue to make new plans to placate themselves, even when history has shown them nothing ever goes exactly as planned. But despite it all, the remaining endure.

And that's what makes them all so _interesting_.

He watches as the silver-haired boy slowly treks to a waiting car and it drives away into the proverbial sunset. A shame, really, the numbers above his head. But no matter. All humans die-even the best (_Isn't that right, Light?_). It'll just make things easier the next time. Ryuk is bored these days. He misses the excitement, the danger, that the Kira years brought him. But now that it's all over, there's nothing new to occupy his time. But he'll wait just a little longer. Just until life really goes on.

Until the life growing in Sayu's womb turns into a boy she will name in the memory of her father and will never know of his deceased uncle. Until Misa is tragically murdered by an obsessed fan with a knife on her way home from a nighttime photo shoot (irony? Or Karma? Then again, he's never had a reason to believe in either…). Until a fire set by another crazy L-hopeful burns down the Wammy orphanage that is never rebuilt and the whole institution collapses.

Until the world forgets all about Kiras and Ls and Shinigamis and Death Notes. And then-oh yes, then-he will play his game again and drop his notebook and hope this time the chaos lasts even longer.

He'll give it twenty more years.

…Maybe ten.

* * *

_No I don't wanna battle from beginning to end;_

_I don't wanna cycle of recycle revenge;_

_I don't wanna follow death and all his friends._

_~Coldplay "Death and All His Friends"_

Like I said, I changed some slight details to make this work a little bit better and just for my personal preference-in the extra Death Note book one of the creators said Matsuda would probably tell Misa that Light was dead and she would kill herself, and she was _way _too close to the edge of that building in the anime, but I thought that was an unfitting end for her character.

And according to some thread I saw once, people used the numbers above Light's head in the manga and his actual death day to come up with a formula for figuring out the shinigami numbers/letters. They said according to his number-letter pattern, Near would die when he was 22, so I stayed true to that. Speaking of Near, I could never decide if he was really seeing all those people in his bedroom, or if he was just going crazy.

I also wanted a happy ending for Sayu and Matsuda. Those two need love, don't they?

I don't like to beg, but a review or two would really make my day!

Anyways, thanks for reading.

**parkingLOTinTHEidiot**


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